


Worthy

by fieryanmitsu



Series: A3! Rare Pairs Week 2020 [1]
Category: A3! (Video Game)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Established Relationship, F/M, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-16
Updated: 2020-07-16
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:21:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25293865
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fieryanmitsu/pseuds/fieryanmitsu
Summary: Written for Day 1 of A3! Rare Pairs Week 2020.Prompt: JealousyA curious Izumi asks her boyfriend whether he had ever felt jealous. The answer she receives is far from what she expects.
Relationships: Chigasaki Itaru/Tachibana Izumi
Series: A3! Rare Pairs Week 2020 [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1832380
Comments: 21
Kudos: 88
Collections: A3! Rare Pairs Week 2020





	Worthy

**Author's Note:**

> I AM SO LATE, but welcome to my first entry for the A3! Rare Pairs Week 2020! 
> 
> This writing event is being hosted by @A3!_69min on Twitter and AO3 and focuses on writing romantic fics for unpopular A3! pairings. As it happens, every single Izumi pairing except Sakyo/Izumi is a rare pair per the event’s definition of rare pair. 
> 
> SO, MY GOAL IS TO WRITE IZUMI SHIPS ALL WEEK!
> 
> Of course, I’m starting off with my OTP—I love ItaIzu so much, I’ll take any excuse to write them.

Izumi was curious.

The question had been on her mind all day since her conversation with Muku over breakfast. The middle schooler had been excitedly telling her all about the shojo manga he was currently reading. Apparently, he hadn’t slept well the night before because he had gotten worked up over the latest chapter.

“You’re staring a hole into my head,” her boyfriend remarked suddenly, though his eyes never left the television screen in front of him, his thumbs flying across his controller.

Itaru was playing some kind of action-adventure game and was currently exploring an underground dungeon with his character. Ever since she had mentioned that she liked the background music, he played this particular game whenever he had to wait for her to finish reviewing her post-rehearsal notes.

“Oh, sorry—I was just… curious about something. But, it’s a bit, er, awkward to ask about…” Izumi responded, one hand fidgeting with the pages of her notebook and the other absentmindedly poking the back of her pen into the Poyo—some pink, round mascot character that Itaru liked—cushion on her lap.

“Oh? Why don’t you try me?”

“Well… I was talking to Muku this morning about the shojo manga he’s reading. There was a scene where the rival character was confessing to the heroine. It was apparently a very heartfelt and passionate declaration of love. Something about how even seeing her with the other guy made his heart feel like it was being torn apart by knives. And that he hated seeing her cry because of that other guy and that he’d give up everything to whisk her away and make her happy. It ended with him asking the heroine to pick him instead.”

“Ahhh, yeah—that’s a classic. Never fails to stir up the fans,” Itaru responded with a knowing nod.

“And then, Muku gave me a 20-minute seminar on classic shojo jealousy scenes and, uh, well… They were more, um, thrilling than I expected? Sooooo, it _kinda_ just, you know… made me wonder,” Izumi stiltedly blurted out. She couldn’t believe she was going to ask him this—her face was already flushed with embarrassment. Maybe Muku’s starry-eyed wonder was contagious. “Do you, umm… ever get jealous of seeing me with other guys?”

“Uh… I’m not sure how to tell you this, but you have twenty other guys, twenty-one if you count Kamekichi, hanging off you—sometimes literally—every single day. If I got jealous every time one of them sat next to you, I’d be six-feet under already.”

“Okay, yeah, that was dumb question—let me rephrase it!” Izumi backpedaled frantically. “What would you do if someone else confessed their love to me—like they were trying to steal me away? Would you be jealous? Would you fly into a blind rage? Or pin me against a wall and forcefully kiss me?! Or barge in and passionately declare: ‘Choose me, not him’?!”

“Man, you really are starting to sound like Muku. All of those options sound awful, by the way. But, in all seriousness, I, uh… don’t think that would ever happen,” he responded with a nervous chuckle.

Izumi felt herself deflate a bit, unable to help feeling just a _teensy_ bit disappointed that he had shot down her fantasies so quickly. At the same time, she wasn’t sure that she could even imagine him acting that way. She just felt like… it wouldn’t be Itaru anymore—and that thought also made her feel uncomfortable. Maybe this whole jealousy thing wasn’t as exciting as she had thought it would be a few minutes ago.

As her thoughts came full circle, she suddenly heard an odd sound from the television. She had been watching Itaru play this game for a few days now and recognized the sounds his character made when he was dying. Thinking that he was losing against a boss, Izumi glanced at the screen and saw that he was just fighting a bunch of normal enemies. She noted that the usual boss music wasn’t playing, either. Yet, his health bar was slowly, but surely, depleting.

Thinking it was strange for him to be playing so badly, Izumi shifted her attention from the television screen to look at Itaru. What she saw made the blood in her veins turn to ice. Unceremoniously throwing her notebook and poor Poyo to the floor, she practically hurled her body across the empty space between them.

Itaru had taught her the basics of how to use his GameStation when she had borrowed a Blu-ray movie from a friend, and she knew that, if she pressed the middle button on his controller, it would bring the user back to the home screen. Reaching over his arm, she pushed down on the middle button and a blue screen immediately popped up, effectively pausing the game. Gently prying the controller away from Itaru’s limp hands, she set it down on his coffee table before she turned off the television screen.

“Itaru, what’s wrong?” she asked worriedly, placing a hand on one of his arms and squeezing it gently.

The salaryman’s brow was furrowed, and he kept his face averted from hers, gaze trained on the floor. Even from his profile, she could see that his mouth was set in a firm and tight line. It had been a long time since she’d seen him make this expression.

“You’re not going to like what I’m about to say,” he responded after a long pause.

Izumi could feel her stomach drop. She had heard those words before—it had been right before her last breakup. She had thought things were going well between them, but maybe she was wrong…?

“Why don’t you try me?” she prompted, trying to keep her voice light as she imitated his words from earlier.

At the same time, she did her best to brace her heart, despite that it was starting to beat erratically. Whatever he said, she would graciously accept it—telling herself that she couldn’t afford to have things be awkward between them.

“Getting jealous over someone… it only happens when you don’t want them taken away from you, right?” Itaru said slowly, deliberately. “So… I don’t think I could ever be jealous… because… I… I don’t feel that way.”

Izumi couldn’t have possibly braced hard enough for that kind of impact. She could feel a hot feeling well up in her throat and tears were already prickling at the back of her eyes.

“Does… Does that mean you don’t want to be with me, anymore?” she asked, unable to help the waver in her voice.

Her question hung in the air unanswered as she watched him clench and unclench his hands on his lap, his eyes still stuck on the floor.

“Itaru, will you look at me? Please?” she begged. She was starting to feel light-headed and she just… She just needed to ground herself somehow.

After a long moment, he shifted his position to angle himself towards her on the couch, though his eyes remained downcast.

Izumi gently cupped his face in her hands and lifted his head to level with her own. She could feel his jaw clenched beneath her palms.

“Itaru, talk to me,” she coaxed gently, fighting to keep her voice steady. “What did you mean earlier?”

Though he didn’t move her hands away, he continued to avert his eyes.

“I… I can’t be jealous,” he began quietly. “Because… if someone else confessed to you, it’d be better that way. I’d be happy.”

“Why would you say that?” Izumi demanded, her tone coming out harsher than she had intended. She inhaled deeply to try and calm herself, though her brain was still rattled by his words. “Weren’t you the one who confessed to me first, Itaru? You asked me to give you a chance, so why would you think that way?”

A long moment passed between them in silence, but Izumi could see Itaru’s emotions warring on his face. She didn’t dare breathe until he finally opened his mouth again.

“Sometimes… I think it was a mistake that I asked you out,” he said quietly, his voice cracking as he continued on. “The more time I spend with you… the more I think about how… how you deserve someone _better_ than me.”

Suddenly, she felt a wet sensation tickle against her fingers. As tears fell from his magenta-coloured eyes, Izumi was struck by several emotions.

The first was awe. For the first time, she understood what it meant when people said that there were beautiful criers. Though she knew that it was morbid, at that moment, she truly thought that Itaru was the most beautiful man she had ever seen, even as tears blotted his cheeks and turned his eyes red.

The second was sorrow. She felt unspeakable sadness that this person before her had struggled through so much in his life that he felt unworthy of being with someone he professed to love and thought that she would be better off without him.

Anger was the third. She was angry at herself for being unable to reassure him, to stop him from feeling this way despite the amount of time they had already spent together.

Last of all, she felt a surge of… something. She had only been in a couple of casual relationships before, and none of them as passionate as the one she had experienced with Itaru in the past half a year. Nor were any of them as comfortable as what she felt when she was with him. Spending time with Itaru both calmed her and brought butterflies to her stomach. Never in her life had she felt like she mattered as much as she did than when this man looked at her.

Was this love? She didn’t know, since she had no landmark to compare it against. But, what she _was_ sure of was that she didn’t want to see Itaru look this way. She wanted to see him with his usual crooked smirk, just like the one he always gave when he teased her. She wanted to see his eyes crinkle like they did when he won a game. She wanted to see a smile on his face—like the one that bloomed across his face whenever the curtains fell after a successful Spring Troupe performance.

She didn’t know when it had started, but she was crying as well.

“Itaru,” she started, ignoring the salty taste in her mouth as her tears rolled past her lips, turning his face in an attempt to meet his gaze. “You… You don’t mean that, do you.”

“I do,” he said firmly, still refusing to look her in the eye. Instead, he took her hands in his and removed it from his face—but rather than letting them go, his fingers squeezed hers tightly.

“No, you don’t,” she replied just as forcefully, finding her footing again as her heart resolved itself. “Because if you did, then you wouldn’t look so torn right now. Your hands wouldn’t be shaking. If you would truly be happy to have someone take me away from you, then you wouldn’t have been dying against enemies that you can usually beat in your sleep.”

Itaru closed his eyes, as if he were wincing in pain.

“Itaru, _please_. Don’t push me away.”

A fresh stream of tears rolled down his face as he let out a rasping breath, shoulders shaking.

“Did you know, the look on your face just now was so similar to when you told me you wanted to quit the troupe? You couldn’t look at me when I asked you to admit that you weren’t interested in theatre—that you didn’t care about performing with the others,” she said softly, using her thumb to wipe away the tears streaking his face.

As a quiet sob tore its way out of Itaru’s throat, he leaned forward and buried his head against her shoulder, quickly soaking the material of her shirt. Letting her own tears fall, she lightly ran her fingers through his hair.

“I… I want… to be with you… I want to feel worthy of you,” he gasped out in between sobs.

“Itaru, I’m not some deity on a pedestal. I’m just a regular person, like you. You don’t have to be worthy of anything to be with me,” she replied.

She felt him shake his head against her shoulder, his hair tickling against her chin.

“If you still think that way, then… then let me tell you what I told you once before. Give yourself a little more time,” Izumi said, wrapping her arms around him, and nuzzling her face into his hair. “You owe it to yourself to keep trying. And… it’s not all on you. I’ll keep trying, too. I want to be a person that’s worthy of your efforts.”

Then, after a long moment cradled in her arms, Itaru slowly lifted his head and finally allowed his red-rimmed eyes to meet hers, a small, lop-sided smile sneaking its way onto his lips.

“Well… then I hope you’re ready to accept responsibility for your actions again.”

“Of course!”

**Author's Note:**

> I had hoped to put this out on the actual first day of this week, but I kept rewriting it because I wasn’t satisfied with it. Even now, I’m not completely pleased with the finished product, but, I honestly don’t know how long it would take me to finish writing if I kept mulling over it! So, I decided to finally just settle with this version and post it and not look back!! 
> 
> In the end, I still got my central point across: which is that I wanted to write about how and why someone doesn’t feel jealous in a romantic relationship. And, so, this happened, haha. But, I didn’t want a sad ending, so I ended up on a hopeful note.
> 
> Anyway, I APPARENTLY ONLY WRITE ITAIZU ANGST. I’m so sorry, Itaru – I’ll do you right next time!! No, really, HAHA. My entry for Day 2 (which will hopefully get written out in the next couple of days) is another ItaIzu and it’s NOT sad, I promise. In fact, it’s just PWP, LOLOL.
> 
> If you liked my first entry, please do stick around for my other pieces for “A3! Rare Pairs Week 2020”! After my ItaIzu for Day 2, I’ll be moving on to other Izumi pairings. It’s a secret for now which pairings will all be covered in the end, but I’m here to spread the Izumi love!!
> 
> Thank you for reading and please do leave a comment letting me know what you think!


End file.
